Family language policy and survival strategies in a Greek multilingual family with deaf and hearing members
Temas
Detalles
This article investigates the family language policy (FLP) of a multilingual Greek household with deaf and hearing members, focusing on the interplay of home sign, Greek Sign Language (GSL), and spoken Greek. Situated within the frameworks of FLP and translanguaging, the study explores how practices and ideologies are negotiated across generations in a rural environment with limited access to sign language resources. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and narrative analysis involving three family members across three generations. Narratives elicited personal language trajectories, turning points, and reflections on language ideologies. The findings highlight the family's multilingual repertoires and their adaptive communication strategies across household, educational, and bureaucratic settings. Home sign emerged as the primary language of intimacy, while GSL features and spoken Greek were selectively mobilised in wider interaction. The reliance on hearing children as interpreters underscores the unequal distribution of communicative labour within deaf-hearing families. Intergenerational narratives reveal a gradual shift towards spoken Greek dominance, reflecting structural pressures and ideologies privileging speech. This case extends FLP research to contexts of inequality. It demonstrates how rural multilingualism shapes access, resources, and intergenerational practices, and shows how cross-modal translanguaging functions simultaneously as a survival strategy and an implicit form of FLP.